


Hollow

by RoseByAnyOtherName17



Series: The Lion, the Wolf and the Dragon [30]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Admission of Truth, Angst, Execution, F/M, Goodbyes, Imprisonment, King's Landing, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 14:02:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18592735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseByAnyOtherName17/pseuds/RoseByAnyOtherName17
Summary: "I'm so sorry, m'lady," he mumbled into her skin.





	Hollow

**Author's Note:**

> So a lot of this one was actually written quite a bit of time ago, so that's why it's going up so fast. I can't guarantee that the remainder of the series will be that way, but I do have some more prewritten stuff so it's possible it will. Enjoy this chapter! I loved writing it.

Cersei was guarded day and night so as to prevent any remaining hidden followers from seeing her.

 

Arya saw to it that the guards were rotated regularly, and were never the Lannister men that surrendered the moment that Gendry opened the gates to let the dragon queen’s army storm into the city. Every time a guard changed, she saw to it herself that they had a good meal and got some rest. No one man guarded Cersei more than once in two days, and only at a four hour stretch at that. Arya was taking no chances, and Daenerys was inclined to give her full authority over Cersei’s imprisonment.

 

The pyromancer had been caught early, by none other than Gendry himself. As they were sneaking through the tunnels, _he_ was making his way down to the lowest levels of the city, to break open the barrels of wildfire and prepare to light them. His timing was perfect; Gendry saw him, saw the candles he carried, and hit him over the head so hard with his hammer that the pyromancer’s face was unrecognizable when his body was found.

 

Cersei’s plan, as Arya had begun to suspect during their meeting, had been this: get Myrcella, have the Mountain and the Lannister men outside the room kill Daenerys and all the rest of them, escape the castle to a boat waiting outside, and get far enough out into the sea to a waiting ship to be taken to Essos. As soon as she and Myrcella were out of the castle, the whole city was meant to burn. The messengers that were set up in intervals to alert the pyromancer had not yet been found, but Arya was confident that, if Cersei did not give up their names, they would cause no more trouble.

 

And truthfully, it was Arya herself who saved them all, by telling Cersei the lie that Sansa had admired her so greatly. She had spoken without thought then, but it worked, and bought Gendry enough time to make it to the gates. Only five men out of his twenty were lost to the Lannisters. The Lannisters stopped fighting long before the full army had entered the city, and Gendry attributed it to Nymeria ripping a man’s arm right out of its socket at the same time that a Dothraki rode in and sliced the same man’s head clean off.

 

It had gone as well as it possibly could have, and yet Arya was still on edge.

 

They weren’t Arya’s old chambers in the Red Keep, but the differences were minimal. Gendry looked around in awe; even after so many nights spent in castle rooms with her, he was still so surprised that a place this beautiful could exist. Never mind that this particular castle was the ugliest Arya had ever seen, including the half-built, burnt remains of Winterfell during her brief visit.

 

“It’s amazing,” he breathed.

 

“Fit for a king and all his courtesans,” Arya answered quietly. She watched the sun setting over Flea Bottom, kissing the tops of the roofs despite the earliness of the hour. Winter was finally showing itself here as well, now that the mad summer queen was defeated. And Arya had no more excuses to hide.

 

When she turned, Gendry was gazing at her with soft, worried eyes. “You haven’t been yourself since Daenerys was crowned,” he said, stepping closer.

 

Arya shrugged, not meeting his eyes. “A lot has been happening.” And it was true; springing the attack on Cersei without having her burn the city to the ground had taken every bit of cunning they could dredge up between them all. Taking the city without the dragons…Arya had thought for a moment, truly, that this was how it ended. That they were all going to die and she wouldn’t have…she wouldn’t…

 

“You’ve never seen me kill in person,” she said quietly. “Outside of a battle, I mean. You didn’t see what I did to Walder Frey or his men, when I was executing them after Riverrun. I made sure of it; you were never there.” He had only ever seen the after – the grim satisfaction that he could melt away with a hand cupping her cheek and lips to the top of her head. “But tomorrow…I need you to be there, when I execute Cersei. And you’re going to see me like that, and I’m so, so sorry but I can’t do it without you. Not this.” Her voice raised as she spoke, until she was swallowing around the lump in her throat and tilting her head up to look at the ceiling, to blink back tears. For the first time since the Faceless Men told her to give up her identity and throw Needle in the river, she was overwhelmed. Exhausted. She had slept maybe two hours altogether in the last three days and now that it was finally still, she couldn’t figure out how to be without bursting at the seams.

 

“Arya,” she heard Gendry say, felt a hand on her face and fingers curling around her hip, pulling her close to his body. She fell into him, clenching her trembling hands into his shirt because this was it now, there were no more excuses to make, she had to _tell him_ or she might just die.

 

“You think that…you think that it’ll be you,” she whispered into his neck, “that’s going to ruin this but it won’t, it’ll be _me.”_ She squeezed her eyes shut, but the tears spilled down her cheeks anyway, flowed right onto his skin and she felt the moment he realized what it was. “It’ll be me, Gendry, because of what I’ve done and what they did to me – I’m barely even _human_ anymore.”

 

“That’s not true,” he murmured, smoothing a hand over her hair, but he didn’t _know._

 

He would now.

 

She breathed deep and stepped back. “There’s something I need to show you,” she said quietly, wiping the tears away with a rough hand. “I should’ve ages ago, but…I was afraid.” She met his eyes, and her heart broke with how concerned he looked for her. “But you deserve to know.” She turned to face the window, looking out over Flea Bottom, and began unbuttoning her jerkin.

 

“Arya—”

 

“Shut up,” she hushed him, still facing away, until she could shrug the article off her shoulders. She hesitated for one moment more, but when he drew in breath again to speak she lifted the tunic she had on under it until she was left in just her soft underclothing. She undid the heavy belt around her waist too, letting it and her heavy leather skirt fall to the floor, before she turned around again. Gendry stared at her in his endearing way that he always did when she undressed for bed, in that way that he tried not to but couldn’t look away. This time though, his soft self-consciousness was overridden by worry, because she didn’t have her long undershirt on this time, and her belly was exposed.

 

“What are you doing, Arya?” he asked in a low voice.

 

She didn’t answer except to say, “Sit down,” and waited until he was seated on the edge of the bed, still looking up at the tearstains on her cheeks. She took four steps forward to come between his legs. “Give me your hands.”

 

“Arya—”

 

“Just do it,” she said harshly, and immediately regretted it. “Please,” she added. He did, and she placed them on her hips, thumbs sitting low on her pelvis just above her core. She watched his face as his brows furrowed, finally lowering his gaze to his own hands. He opened his mouth, then frowned, rubbing his thumbs against her skin. She knew what he felt, the twin raised scars.

 

“What…?”

 

Arya fixed her stare on the wall over his head. “The Faceless Men are efficient, more than any other group in the world,” she said emotionlessly. She had to distance herself from it, or she would scream from the injustice of what they took. “When they became certain – when I had convinced them that I had let go of my identity, they began to let me assassinate people myself. They kept me away from anyone who might have had some significance to Arya Stark, of course, because I’d already proved once that temptation like that wasn’t something I could ignore. Sometimes these faces that the assassins take on are those of…well. Where are places that the most secrets are told, and none are ever revealed?” Gendry was beginning to understand, she thought, and when he opened his mouth to ask she assured him, “I never was one of those faces. I didn’t get there. But the Faceless Men thought that one day I would, so…” She placed her hands over his. “I don’t know what they did, exactly, but whatever it was, they made sure that I could never…” She swallowed. “I think that’s when I started to come back to myself. I’d never wanted to be a mother, I knew even as a child, but they took away the choice, _my_ choice. But the one thing that would give a Faceless Man an identity again was a child. So they cut that part out of me.”

 

Gendry took his hands away to look at the silvery scars on her pelvis. “Did it hurt?”

 

Arya shrugged. “They numbed me, somehow, but I was awake for it. There wasn’t as much blood as I thought there’d be.”

 

Gendry raised his eyes to hers. “And you…you haven’t…?”

 

Arya smiled ruefully. “I haven’t bled.” She bit her lip. “It was Arya Stark’s thirteenth name day.” She was almost a woman of one and six now.

 

Gendry looked up at her for a long minute, and she looked back, until he tugged her forward by her waist and wrapped his arms around her, face buried in her neck. “I’m so sorry Milady,” he mumbled into her skin. The nickname was what made the tears well up again, and this time she didn’t hide her sobs, just muffled them in his hair and shook in his arms.

 

**

 

That night, Arya accompanied Myrcella to the dungeon where her mother was being kept.

 

“I will not allow her to die without knowing that I still love her,” Myrcella said firmly, “and if this is the last time I can do it, then I will.” They had arranged for her to sail back to Dorne at dawn, back to Trystane and the Martells. She publicly swore allegiance to Daenerys the morning after the battle, but privately made the deal that to do so, she was to be reunited with her betrothed. She was granted her wish.

 

Cersei’s cell was well-outfitted; there were no windows, but she had been given a featherbed and a desk with a lamp, and all of the wine she could want. Arya had protested this treatment, citing her numerous crimes as more than enough reason to throw her into the blackest cell and left alone, but Daenerys would not allow it. “She is still a noblewoman,” Daenerys told Arya, “and she will be treated as such until the time of her execution. We are better than her,” she added when Arya opened her mouth to argue. “She will know the respect that she did not give your father or anyone else.”

 

No one was allowed inside the cell with Cersei, and Myrcella didn’t complain. She stood just outside the door, resting a hand on the iron bars, and said softly, “Mother.”

 

It was clear to Arya that Cersei had not taken imprisonment well. She remembered that the woman had been imprisoned before, by the High Sparrow. Last time, it had lead to the destruction of one of the oldest buildings in King’s Landing. This time, Cersei would not have the chance for destruction ever again.

 

But Cersei’s eyes were shadowed, her short hair unkempt. She clearly had not changed clothing since the city was taken almost a week ago; her dress was the same she had worn that day in the council chamber. The long black sleeves, however, were frayed now at the end, and the bodice smudged with dirt and dust. In those six days, she had lost weight, and Arya saw now the uneaten food on the desk. She wondered what Cersei intended to gain by refusing to eat.

 

She stood back in the shadows and watched as Cersei slowly stood from the bed and walked to within a few feet of the door. “Traitors usually don’t have the courage to face the one they betrayed,” she said quietly. “Evidently, you’re of the same mold as your uncle.”

 

“I did not betray you,” Myrcella murmured. “And you know it.”

 

Cersei chuckled. “You led my enemy to my doorstep and convinced me to let them into my home while they stormed my castle and killed my men,” she said. “If that is not betrayal, then I suppose your uncle’s murder of your grandfather is not either.”

 

Myrcella sighed. “I am not here to fight. I’m here to tell you that I’m going back to Dorne to marry Trystane, and that, despite everything, I still love you, Mother. I always will.”

 

Cersei hardly seemed to hear her, throwing her head back and laughing mirthlessly now. “Another betrayal, marrying the man your uncle sold you to. He has taught you well, daughter.”

  
Tears gleamed in Myrcella’s eyes, but her voice was steady. “I fell in love,” she said, “something you have never felt.”

 

Cersei’s expression changed so fast to fury that Arya almost flinched. “I love your father,” she snarled, “and I love you, and I loved your brothers.”

 

“You don’t love Father,” Myrcella answered, still calm despite the tears running down her cheeks now. “You never did, you only used him as a means to an end. As for us, your children…you let Tommen die. You let Joffrey grow up to be cruel. And you let Uncle Tyrion send me away. If you had cared enough, you could have stopped that. If you cared, you would have tried to rescue me from Dorne the second Daenerys Targaryen made it to Westeros.” She paused briefly, looking directly into Cersei’s wild eyes. “I used to wonder how Joffrey could be so…so heartless. I guess now I understand. I wish I had before.”

 

Cersei watched her daughter with narrow eyes, and then slowly, her gaze slid to Arya. Arya repressed a shiver and stared back, and before long, Cersei looked away. “I suppose you think you’ve chosen the right side,” she said to Myrcella.

 

Myrcella closed her eyes, exhaled shakily. “I chose love,” she responded. “But you never did. So I guess that’s where this leaves us.”

 

The moment Myrcella stepped away, Cersei collapsed to her knees, sobbing, begging her to come back. And though Myrcella was sobbing too, she kept her eyes forward and her head high, and led the way out of the dungeon.

 

**

 

Before Arya stepped out on the steps in front of the whole of the city, Gendry held her hand, and whispered in her ear, “I love you now, and I will love you after this and for as long as we live. I promise.”

 

She believed him.

 

She walked out into the sunlight.


End file.
